Post Comment Love 30 May - 1 June

Hello there, and welcome to this week’s #PoCoLo - a relaxed, friendly linky which I co-host with Suzanne, where you can link any blog post published in the last week. We know you’ll find some great posts to read, and maybe some new-to-you blogs too, so do pop over and visit some of the posts linked, comment and share some of that love.

Please don’t link up posts which are older as they will be removed, and if you see older posts are linked then please don’t feel that it’s necessary to comment on those. If you were here last week it was great to have you along, if you’re new here we’re pleased you’ve joined us.

Whilst in Devon the other week we had a day at the Devon County Show - our first time at any county show - and it was great. It was much like the garden or house shows we’ve been to before but with the addition of animals in almost every shape and size - from ferrets to heavy horses and almost everything in between. It was a good day out, and you never know we may even get along to the Nottinghamshire County Show, which is around the same time, next year.

I saw and fell in love with some rusty signs, as MOH calls them. Each had a well known quote from a TV show or movie, and we spent some time identifying most of them before narrowing our favourites down to three, and then leaving with this one.

It’s already up in our garden, and while this may or may not be its final position, I really do love it when a plan comes together. Almost as much as The A Team!

Have a great week.

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Looking ahead to this year's Gardeners' World Live Show

* I have been invited this year’s Gardeners’ World Live and provided with a pair of tickets to visit the show, therefore all my posts will be marked as 'Ad’ though as usual my views and opinions are very much my own.

This year I’m unable to make it to the press preview before the show opens, but thankfully I’m still able to get to the show. For the first time I’ll be going along on the Sunday, so it’ll be interesting to see how the show is different on its final day.

As ever the Gardeners’ World team have an amazing line up planned for theshow, and my plan is still to see as much of it as I can - but this year, more than ever, I need a plan so we can cram as much as we can into a single day.

1 Nick Bailey’s Show Garden - The Plant-Based Garden

I’m keen to see how Nick has incorporated the ‘Make a Metre Matter’ campaign into his garden. The pre-show information says that it will be packed with Make a Metre Matter metres, so I’m sure it will provide plenty of inspiration for me, and everyone else who visits the garden.

Picture credit © BBC Gardeners’ World Live - A Sketch of Nick Bailey's Headline Show Garden, The Plant-Based Garden

2 Pip Probert’s ‘Make a Metre Matter’ collection

Yes, this campaign has really captured my imagination - we all have a metre that we can ‘donate’ and make good use of. At the show Pip aims to bring some of the BBC Gardeners’ World Magazine’s creative ideas to life, and she’s also designed some special metres to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Greenfingers, the charity which creates children’s hospice gardens.

3 The Green Rooms

With more houseplants than I’ve ever had before I’m keen to find out more about how I should be caring for my ever growing indoor plant collection, getting as much advice as I can from Sarah Gerrard-Jones (@theplantrescurer) and Ian Morrison. And maybe of course I’ll be able to add to those…

4 All of the Show Gardens and all of the Beautiful Borders

Yes, there are lots of these and it’s my plan as ever to get to see, and photograph, them all. I already know there’s going to be some corkers, and I’m especially going to be looking out for the Midlands Air Ambulance Reflection Garden, the New Build Garden by Mimosa Design Ltd and Garden Organic’s wildlife garden.

Plus this year the APL Show Gardens will have a theme of water, which is something that’s not really big on my garden wish list, so we’ll see if these professionally designed gardens can change my mind.

The theme for the Beautiful Borders this year is ‘Cultivating Connections’ and includes a design from Lego, the 160th Unbirthday of Alice in Wonderland, the Golden Hour and the Milky Way - so I’m even more intrigued than I was to see how they’ve interpreted the theme.

5 Hot Off The Potting Bench in the Floral Marquee

I know that the marquee is going to be an assault on all of my senses, but last year I really enjoyed seeing the new plants and varieties on show, and which we may see in our garden centres in the years to come.

And finally,

And I don’t think I’ll ever stop enjoying the Health for Life Wheelbarrow Competition, with entries from local school children. The theme is once again a ‘food and climate’ theme so it’ll be interesting to see their interpretation, which at times is far from what you’d think from these creative young minds.

This year may be the year we spend time in the Plant Village as it could also be the first year that we drive to the NEC, rather than go on the train. It could be very dangerous, but also as it’s the last day of the show there could be some bargains to be had. We’ll see.

* With thanks to Gardeners’ World for inviting me to Gardeners’ World Live, I’m looking forward to seeing this year’s show.

Making my mystery block of the month: April

You’ll have seen that I plan to complete Sherri’s mystery block a month quilt and yesterday I shared the test blocks which I made into my sixth charity quilt, today I’m sharing the friendship star block I made for my own quilt.

I had a feeling that this month would be another star block, after all there’d been the cute houses, the vintage star and then the heart last month - and I wasn’t wrong, was I? So I suspect that the alternate months will also be stars, and so I formulated another plan, in that I’d use the navy materials for all the stars using these blocks to ‘punctuate’ my quilts.

I don’t know if I’m right, but I do know that next month’s block isn’t a star, so I’ve a fifty-fifty chance when the next block is released at the start of June, haven’t I?

Anyway, with navy chosen and with my test blocks completed more easily than I expected, I was ready to get going. In fact so much so, that I only stopped to take a picture once it was completely assembled.

I’m about to blow my own trumpet here, but I was really pleased with how the points lined up with the centre square of the star, and I was keeping most things crossed to see how the outer points worked out when I added the outer borders.

Back to the original border fabrics

Last month I spent some time pondering whether or not to introduce new green fabrics into the borders, even drawing myself a scribbled plan. And that helped, a lot. It meant that this month I knew that this block was the first block on my second row of the finished quilt, and so the borders needed to be the original greens.

Though I did need to lay them out and double check that before attaching them.

Happy with that, and they were soon attached.

And look, I kept all the points too. I’m super happy with how this one turned out, points and all - though I’m sure this is more by luck than judgement, but also because the more I sew I seem to gain in competence and confidence.

Join me next month to see how I get on with the next mystery block, and check out my previous posts for my mystery block quilt or the charity quilts made from the test blocks.